


Do you know where the cafeteria's at?

by SamJoinedtheReconCorps



Series: Maybe It Is [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: AU, Bets & Wagers, F/F, F/M, Flashbacks, Hospital, M/M, POV First Person, Physical Therapy, Sexual Abuse, college aged, eventual angst, physical therapist! Jean, sweethearts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2015-06-18
Packaged: 2018-04-05 01:04:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4159737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SamJoinedtheReconCorps/pseuds/SamJoinedtheReconCorps
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marco's grandma's sick and guess who's going to be her physical therapist.<br/>Maybe he can even help Marco figure out how to stop getting his terrifying flashbacks...<br/>In which Jean is the cute physical therapist assigned to Marco's grandma and Marco can't seem to keep away. The bet Sasha made pitting Ymir against him isn't really helping him either...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do you know where the cafeteria's at?

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know - I fucking suck. I have like 47 other fics I should be finishing but this one's just sorta burning a hole in my brain so I just have to write it.
> 
> Hope you like it!
> 
> (Btw, this starts with Marco having a really bad flashback to something that happened to him as a kid - so SPOILER ALERT - if you're triggered by sexual abuse I recommend skipping the first few paragraphs.)

                _Hands roughly pinned me down, roaming along the rest of my body as I struggled._

 _I wanted to scream, I couldn’t breathe – they had a hand clamped firmly over my mouth._ “ _Just promise not to tell anyone, okay? It’ll be our little secret,” they whispered hoarsely. I could feel their hot breath on my face, choking me. Hot tears pricked at my eyes._ Please make it stop _, I began to sob, feeling as their hands reached the waistband of my shorts,_ Please. _I was so scared, there was so much pain -_

              I sat bolt upright in bed, drenched in cold sweat, my alarm clock having woken me up. My heart threatened to burst out of my chest; it was beating frantically within my ribcage. I quickly looked around, gauging my surroundings and happened to notice the time.

             12: 43 am, my alarm clock read, bright red numbers being what finally managed to inject a bit of calm into my fear. I flopped back down onto my back with a sigh, running a hand through my hair and putting the other over my slowly calming heart.

            “Just a nightmare,” I whispered, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath. _It was just a nightmare,_ I repeated, reminding myself of the present. I, Marco Bodt, was no longer 5. I’m 20. It was 2014; later today would be the Play-off for Third Place between Netherlands and Brazil. I continued reminding myself of little things that would keep me grounded in the present, keep me from dwelling too much on my past. I couldn’t just have these panic inducing nightmares anymore. Well, nightmare. Because it was always the same one.

            I threw my arm over my face, taking one last shaky breath before trying to go back to sleep. It vaguely managed to connect within my panicked mind that my alarm clock hadn’t rung, that it was the phone that had woken me up. But who would be calling at this late hour was a mystery which I didn’t dwell upon for very long since a fitful sleep quickly overcame me.

 

* * *

                “Marco?”

                I rolled onto my stomach, not really wanting to turn and face the day just yet. I still felt exhausted, having rested for maybe a couple of hours. _Just 5 more minutes, mom, please,_ I thought, burrowing deeper within my covers.

                “Marco!” my mom called, louder than before, giving my shoulder a firm shake. She sounded awfully worried.

                “Yeah,” I mumbled, peeking up at her from my covers and seeing that she was fully dressed and looking as if she’d had a hell of a night. “Shouldn’t you be in bed?” I asked, finally realizing that it was wrong for my mom to be up in the morning since she had covered the night shift at her job yesterday.

                She bit her lip a bit nervously, a habit that I had inherited from her. “See…your father told me that last night there was a call…”

                I pushed myself up until I was sitting, hearing the slight quiver in her voice and noticing her barely concealed fear. A trickle of dread chilled my bones. No good things come from late night calls.

                “…Grandma’s in the hospital. She had a stroke.”

                 “What?” I asked blankly.

                “Grandma had a stroke,” mom repeated, enunciating every syllable slowly and carefully, as if she were just realizing what had happened as she spoke, “She’s in the intensive care unit down in San Diego – she’s stable but your father and I are leaving right now to go see her and fill out paperwork. You can stay if you wan-“

                “No,” I threw my covers off and began to hunt down a clean pair of jeans, “I’ll go with you guys. I want to see her too.” I knew I wouldn’t feel at ease until I saw her, no matter what anyone told me.

                She didn’t argue, only nodding and saying, “Try to be ready in 10 minutes,” before leaving my room.

                It was 6:47 in the morning, which meant that dad told mom about what had happened as soon as she got home. I put on a t-shirt and began fumbling underneath my bed for my shoes. _If we left now, we’d be getting to San Diego in about 6 hours… so at around noon at best,_ I thought, lacing up my converse. But no matter what, today was bound to be an extremely long day.

* * *

 

                Nothing could have braced me for the tear fest that was going to be thrown in my Grandma’s room. Talking to my cousins did help me get prepared, especially when I heard from them that Grandma was suffering from partial paralysis due to her stroke.

                “ _Embolic stroke,”_ Ymir had told me over the phone with a sigh, “ _she’s been taking everything great but… I don’t know. She’s trying to act tough, but you can tell she’s really scared.”_

                When we got to the hospital my cousins were waiting downstairs, all different levels of worried and anxious – and even more different levels of attire. Sasha, Ymir, and Bertholdt were all in their pajamas; Eren and Mikasa were in day clothes. There was the customary round of “Hello”s and “How are you”s but they weren’t as happy and excited as they usually were – they were all very subdued, due to everyone’s mind being on Grandma’s health.

                The elevator ride upstairs had felt eternal; my mom got stiffer and stiffer the nearer we got to Grandma’s floor. But the walk to the room was what did me in.

                I didn’t know what to actually expect. My grandma was a strong and lively woman. She tended to disguise her old age and thinning hair with colorful headscarves and elegant clothing. Her laughter lines made her seem young and happy. I kept hearing that she was fine, that she was stable, that she would get better, and I wanted to believe it with all my heart but what I saw when we walked into her room told me the exact opposite.

                As soon as we walked in, Grandma turned away from Grandpa and my other aunts and uncles to greet us. She tried to raise her hand and wave – her left hand – but it only twitched slightly. That’s when she started to cry.

                “Look! Look at me!” she lifted her left arm with her right, displaying how flimsy it was before dropping it back into her lap, “I can’t move my arm! Or my leg!” She started sobbing openly, apparently crumbling now that all her children were with her. “I can’t even move the left side of my face,” she sobbed.

                I had never seen my Grandma cry, not when she broke her hip, not when she’d had to go in for surgery a few years back – never, when it came to her own wellbeing. It took all my willpower to not break down into tears, too.

                My mom went over and sat beside her, holding her hand and smoothing out her hair as she cried. Grandma was missing all her colorful clothing as she was swathed in a hospital gown – she was missing everything that made her seem like the young, lively soul that she was. Instead she seemed small, fragile, and utterly defeated.

                Some of my aunts had started to cry too, doing their best at keeping their tears silent as they didn’t want to upset Grandma even more. I turned and saw that Sasha and Bertholdt were both also crying.

                Just then, a nurse poked her head into the room. “Mrs. Bodt?” she asked.

                “Yes?” My mother answered from her place beside my Grandma.

                “Mrs. Bodt, despite your mother’s steady recovery, we would please like you to come with me so that her doctor can explain your mother’s health more extensively and so that you could sign some paperwork,” she said.

                “Of course,” Mom nodded, getting up and following the nurse after she made sure that Grandma’s sobs were receding and becoming shuddering breaths.

                However, the sob-fest was nowhere close to being over and I could feel myself breaking, I could feel myself about to start crying so I did the only thing I could think of: I left.

                Despite what the doctors had said that my grandma was going to be fine and that she was – thus far – making a steady recovery, my grandma was still feeling awful, and having all those crying people around her was definitely _not_ going to help her health, so, instead of adding another sobbing bystander to the mix, I decided to take my tears elsewhere.

                I began walking down the hall, tears freely falling down my face. I quickly tried to wipe them away as a few nurses gave me quizzical looks, but I honestly didn’t care. My grandma was going to be fine. She looked bad – hell, my poor grandma could’ve even move – but she was going to be fine. I could feel relief now begin to flow from my tear ducts, no longer sad but now just terribly relieved that despite how scared we all were, everything was going to be A-okay. Well, maybe not A-okay, but almost there.

                However, with that relief came along other things that I’d pushed to the furthest corners of my mind: hunger and sleep. I could already feel my stomach eating itself, and the yawn that escaped my lips was enough proof of my sleep deprivation. At that, I decided that I’d have to go find the cafeteria. Still crying, I lifted a hand to wipe at my face one last time when I ran right into someone.

                “Watch where you’re fucking going,” they grumbled, sidestepping me to continue on their way.

                I sniffled a quiet, “Oh – sorry,” keeping my gaze away from whomever I’d just plowed into, expecting them to just rush past me.

                But, they didn’t.

                “Hey, are you okay?” they – a guy, probably around my age – asked.

                I thought about lying and plastering a fake smile on my face, but instead I found myself shaking my head. Besides, given that I was lost, I decided that it’d be worth a shot to just ask this guy where I could get some food. “Do you know where the cafeteria’s at?”

                “Yeah, it’s down on the ground floor – C’mon, I’ll take you, I’m leaving anyway,” he volunteered, apparently trying to make up for being initially rude. Damn, I must look real pathetic to evoke this kind of reaction from the guy.

                He turned down the hall and I trailed after him until we got to the elevator, where we both climbed in and he punched the key for the ground floor. We began to descend in silence – aside from my occasional sniffle as I tried to stop crying – until he asked, “What’s wrong?”

                “It’s just my grandma,” I answered, finally turning to look at him. He had a two toned undercut, lighter at the top and darker where it was buzzed the shortest; his eyes were bright – amber colored, which definitely made them stand out against his fair complexion – and his eyebrows were knit together in an expression of worry; his lips were drawn into a small “o” as he seemed to be processing what I’d just said; what he was wearing seemed casual - which seemed odd given that it appeared that he was some sort of nurse.

                 There were a few more beats of silence before he began apologizing, “I’m so, so sorry.”

                 “She’s not dead,” I responded with a smile, finding it kinda funny how quickly this guy had begun to give me his condolences. “I’m actually really, really happy since doctors are saying that she’s okay.” I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “I was just so worried and scared…I guess this is me just letting it all out.”

                 “Oh, okay,” he said, apparently glad that he hadn’t just been mean to someone whose grandma just died.

                 We were quiet for a few more seconds before my stomach decided to make a grand entrance and emitted a deep growl of hunger.

                 I gave him a sheepish smile, “Yeah, I, uh, haven’t eaten because of how worried I’ve been. So, I’m more than a little hungry.”

                “Obviously,” he quipped, glancing down at my stomach before turning back to me, catching me mid yawn. “Apparently, someone’s also a little sleepy,” he smirked.

                “Stress doesn’t give time for sleep, either,” I answered, trying to stifle another yawn. “Which is why I’m planning on getting myself some c-aw-fee,” I finished lamely, having failed to stifle the aforementioned yawn.

                “Look, lemme buy you the coffee – you still seem really shaken up. Besides, it’s the least I can do after having been such a – y’know,” he stammered, “such an asshole.”

                “Oh – thanks.” He had completely caught me off guard, but I still felt genuinely touched – I even managed to laugh. “Honestly, I probably wouldn’t have known how to order it since I haven’t had coffee before, so thanks for the save.”

                The elevator had finally come to a stop, so I walked out, expecting the guy to walk out with me, but he didn’t. I turned to find him still in the elevator, not moving – it didn’t even seem like he was breathing.

                “Hello? Earth to stranger,” I said, waving from where I stood. He didn’t react, so I got closer – however, before I could actually reach him, the elevator dinged, signaling that its doors were about to shut.

                That seemed to be what jump-started him, since he bounded out of the elevator before it closed its doors. “Wait – you’ve never had coffee before?” he asked, apparently hung up on that little fact.

                “Nope,” I answered, and then paused, thinking. “Well, I’ve had it before – like a little sip here and there, but I’ve never really drank an actual cup of coffee.”

                He seemed astounded. “How have you gone through your life without the mana from the gods?” he breathed.

                I shrugged. “I’m more of a tea person; coffee’s too bitter for my taste.” I looked around, catching a sign that read CAFETERIA with a small arrow pointing down a hall. “But, that’s probably what’ll help keep me going till later,” I explained, starting to make my way down the hall.

              “Hold up,” he said, jogging to catch up to me, “you cannot be telling me that you are going to get your first cup of coffee at a _hospital_?”

              “Do you have a better idea?” I questioned in turn.

              “Actually, I do,” he smiled, obviously proud of whatever idea had popped into that little head of his. “Come with me.”

              He made his way to the hospital’s lobby, and I almost had to run to keep up with his sharp turns and quick footsteps. He _had_ to be some sort of staff member – he seemed to have this hospital _memorized_.

             “Okay,” he said when we finally got to the lobby. He led me to one of the vacant seats, “Sit here.” Seemingly about to run off somewhere else he turned and assured, “I’ll be right back.”

             Then he was gone.

             I had a short mental debate about whether I should stay and wait for this stranger or just get up and go grab myself some coffee in the cafeteria, but, as I was about to get up and leave, all I could remember was his earnest expression when he’d said _I’ll be right back_.

             Sighing, I made myself comfortable in the chair he’d sat me in and decided to wait.

* * *

 

             “Ba-ack!” he sang, jostling me from my light sleep. He leaned over and snapped his fingers in front of my face in an attempt to fully wake me up. “Dude, you _must_ be 100% awake to fully appreciate your first cup of coffee.”

             I rubbed at my eyes sleepily. “Took you long enough,” I yawned.

            “It’s not like the nearest Starbucks is down the street,” he answered, shoving a large cold cup into my hands. “Now, _drink_.” This boy looked so excited to see me drink this - he was practically bouncing in the seat he’d taken across from me.

            Sitting up a little straighter – so as to not disrespect the “mana from the gods” as he so eloquently put it – I took a drink.

           And, man, was it _good._

          “Do you like it?” he asked, obviously having seen the look of delight on my face.

          “Yeah,” I grinned, “This is actually super delicious!” I took another sip before finally regarding my drink. It looked like any regular Starbucks drink: tan in color, topped with a dollop of whipped cream, and with caramel syrup dribbled over the whipped cream all in a nice little cup with a green straw and the logo stamped on the front. Something written messily written beside the logo was what caught my attention. “Thanks,” I glanced at the name written on the cup, “John…?”

           His bright eyes quickly turned venomous as I realized John was probably _not_ his name. “Leave it to Starbucks to fuck up my name,” he grumbled, adding with a sigh, “It’s actually Jean.”

           “ _Jean,_ ” I tested, doing my best to pronounce it the same way he’d done. Apparently, I said it correctly since he smiled at my pronunciation. “French?” I asked.

           “On my dad’s side, yeah,” he confirmed. He then turned curious eyes to me, “What’s your name?”

          “Marco,” I answered, “Marco Bodt.” I outstretched my hand and he shook it.

          “Pleasure to 'meet' you, Marco,” he grinned. The smile immediately melted off his face when his cell phone rang. He glanced at it quickly and swore. “I-I have to go,” he stammered, jumping to his feet. “Here,” he pushed a small box into my hands. Cookies.

          “Just the drink would have been fine,” I said, reaching for my wallet to pay him back for the things he’d gotten for me.

         He obviously noticed what I’d been about to do because he quickly shot out, “Nope, no, you aren’t going to pay me back.” I was about to say something in turn but he didn’t even give me time to open my mouth, “You looked really upset – and I was rude as fuck to you when you were super upset – and you haven’t eaten. Just take them, dude.”

         “O-okay,” I smiled at him in an attempt to show him that there were no hard feelings for his initial rudeness, “Thanks, Jean.”

         “You’re very welcome, Marco,” he answered, already turning to leave. He gave me one last sincere smile, “I hope your grandma gets better.” Then he jogged out of the lobby.

         I got up after he left, taking a cookie from the box and wolfing it down. Deciding that the waterworks were probably over at my grandma’s room, I began making my way back the way we’d come. I looked down at the drink he’d gotten me, at the wrong name written sloppily on the side. _Jean,_ I mused, _it has a nice ring to it._

**Author's Note:**

> In case you were wondering, the drink Jean got for Marco was a Caramel Frappuccino
> 
> I will eventually get back to writing this - expect a Jean POV, too - but I'm no longer giving myself due dates that I know I won't be able to meet.
> 
> Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it!


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